We are delighted to be attending this year’s Whittington Summer Show, from 2pm on the afternoon of Saturday 4th September. It will be a busy day as I will be sharing my time between representing Typoretum and manning the The Occasional Print Club stall, where we will be selling copies of our latest OPC poster.
The Whittington Press will also be holding its annual open day and several other private presses will be exhibiting. The Whittington Presswill be showing off its latest publications and their refurbished Monotype department will be in action, selling type and ornaments.
41st Whittington Summer Show poster with wood engraving by Rachel Reckitt
Chronicle Books will shortly be publishing the Little Book of Letterpress, edited by Charlotte Rivers and with a foreword by Yee-Haw Industries.
“Thanks to traditional letterpress technique’s popularity in DIY and indie-crafter circles, it’s become the darling of the stationery world with innovative new studios popping up all over the globe, from Texas to Denmark. Little Book of Letterpress is a treasure trove of remarkable work from some of the hottest and coolest letterpress studios working today, including Egg Press and Hello Lucky. Featuring an enlightening history of the craft, explanations of the different types of presses, sneak peeks into the studios, and details about the process of creation, this volume is the epitome of handcrafted hip.
Design writer Charlotte Rivers is the author of numerous books. She lives in London. The beloved and respected press Yee-Haw Industries is based in Knoxville, Tennessee.”
Thanks to a number of creative individuals that I follow on Twitter, I discovered a fascinating article about the sad demise of letterpress in China. Given my deep interest in letterpress printing, I have often wondered how the method of printing from movable type is possible at all in China, since at least 4,000 Chinese characters are commonly used. Being hamstrung with so many characters seems now to be bringing letterpress printing to an end in China, ironically at a time when the craft is enjoying a renaissance in the West…
“While Western letterpress printing has made a recent revival, what was once considered one of the Four Great Inventions of Ancient China is no longer a sustainable practice in its country of origin.”
Cheryl Yau, 2010
Type specimen book from Tak Hing Matrix Type Founders Company (Photo: Cheryl Yau)
“When entering the Chinese letterpress shop, an instant observation was the vast amount of characters in each set of type. Characters of the Latin alphabet were often organized either by uppercase and lowercase (so named because of the separate cases to differentiate between majuscule and minuscule letterforms) or more recently in a California Job Case. Instead of using of a type drawer, Chinese characters were typically stored in cube shelving with the type stacked into a square or column, facing outward for easy identification. Using a pair of tweezers, printers carefully picked characters out of a wall of tiled type and placed them onto a composing stick before setting up the chase.”
“The use of movable type in China is now a rare business and found only in the rural village of Dongyuan for printing pedigrees. Although this traditional method has been replaced by offset and digital printing, there are single print shops in Hong Kong and Taiwan that still keep extensive collections of their lead type and press machines. Lately, there has been discussion about collecting these existing artifacts and setting up printing museums or digitalizing the complete fonts. Hopefully these projects will come to life soon, sharing and preserving Chinese cultural heritage.”
Welcome to the twentieth ‘What Face Wednesday’ metal typeface identification competition! This week’s prize is a choice of any two hand-printed letterpress Christmas cards (including free International p&p) from the selection on my Typoretum website.
All correct answers will be placed in a hat and one winner will be randomly drawn. To enter the prize draw, all you need to do is identify the typeface shown below and email your answer to me.
Congratulations to the winners of this week’s competition, Quinton Bruton & Matt Rowe, who correctly identified the typeface as Huxley Vertical. This typeface was designed by Walter Huxley and introduced by American Typefounders in 1935.
Saturday’s issue of the Financial Times (21st November 2009) featured an article exploring the renaissance of letterpress printing for greeting cards and social stationery. Nestled amongst advertisements for exquisite jewellery could be found a photograph showing a display of dusty old typecases and selection of letterpress printed greeting cards, that included one of my own designs. The full article can be read here.
Welcome to the nineteenth ‘What Face Wednesday’ metal typeface identification competition! This week I have decided not to add a proof of the typeface as it is a relatively easy offering but I am looking for the name of the typeface and its’ designer.
The prize is a choice of any two hand-printed letterpress greeting cards (including free International p&p) from the selection on my Typoretum website. All correct answers will be placed in a hat and one winner will be randomly drawn. To enter the prize draw, all you need to do is identify the typeface shown below and email your answer to me.
Congratulations to the winner of this week’s competition, Andy English, who correctly identified the typeface as Albertus. This typeface was designed by Berthold Wolpe and introduced by Monotype between 1932-40.
Richard Ardagh and Graham Bignell of New North Press have just completed a new hand-printed letterpress poster and have added it to the redesigned New North Press website and online shop.
“Established in 1986, New North Press is an artisan letterpress print studio based in London. We have a substantial library of type, both wooden and metal, which we set by hand and print on Albion presses. The components and technique of this method of printing have remained unchanged for over a century so we are very proud to be able to keep this beautiful process alive.”
Welcome to the eighteenth ‘What Face Wednesday’ metal typeface identification competition! This week’s prize is a choice of any two hand-printed letterpress greeting cards (including free International p&p) from the selection on my Typoretum website.
All correct answers will be placed in a hat and one winner will be randomly drawn. To enter the prize draw, all you need to do is identify the typeface shown below and email your answer to me.
Congratulations to the winner of this week’s competition, Rob Sawkins, who correctly identified the typeface as Bernhard Fashion. This typeface was designed by Lucian Bernhard and introduced by American Typefounders in 1929. Subsequently, matrices of Bernhard Fashion were also available for the casting on the Intertype system.
On 24th September, six designers participated in a letterpress workshop for Greengaged 2009, contributing to the discussion of ‘Crafting Mass Production’. The workshop was delivered by Workshop – a London based design co-operative specialising in letterpress and print and founded by James Allen, Alexander Cooper, Rose Gridneff and Elliot Hammer.
Photographs of day four of Greengaged 2009, themed ‘Crafting Mass Production’, can be viewed on the Greengaged Flickr site and more information is available on the Greengaged website.
Greengaged is a not for profit organisation founded in 2008 by Sophie Thomas from thomas.matthews, Sarah Johnson from Re Design and Anne Chick from The Sustainable Design Research Centre at Kingston University.
Greengaged aims to advance the design industry’s capacity to respond positively to key environmental challenges such as climate change. This is done by offering thought leadership, creating spaces for dialogue, and opportunities for knowledge sharing – within the industry and beyond.
Thanks to @simongoode on Twitter, I discovered The Movie Title Stills Collectionand I feel sure that this archive will be of great interest to any student of typography. Assembled and curated by the Dutch designer Christian Annyas, the collection features an astonishing collection of movie titles from 1920 to the present day.
By way of explanation for his creation of The Movie Title Stills Collection, Christian explains: “I’ve seen a lot of movies over the years, and to prove I’ve sat through at least the first ten minutes of them I started making screenshots of the titles. Then my computer crashed and I almost lost them all. To save them for future generations I created this little website.”
Chronicle Books will shortly be publishing the 
